Welcome to TechTips. The goal of this site is to inform and educate the students, staff, and faculty of The Ohio State University Libraries System about various emerging technologies that may impact the services that the Libraries provide.
Posts filed under 'Discovery'
I received an email from a colleague about a month or so ago about a search engine they uncovered, called DeepDyve. DeepDyve was started in 2005 by two scientists who had previously worked on the Human Genome Project. It makes sense that the search engine searches for information spanning the life sciences, medicine, and patents. ( Note: Steve Wozniak as a member of their advisory board.)
The original focus of the company was to build a powerful research search engine. While most search engine queries consist of just few words, DeepDyve queries can be as complex as the searcher desires: a few words, whole sentences, paragraphs, anything up to 25,000 characters. DeepDyve indexes entire phrases of up to 20 words each, compared to most search engines indexes individual keywords.
A funny thing happened. The company changed their focus.
While DeepDyve still makes use of their proprietary search engine technology, they are now marketing themselves as an online research rental service that provides access to over 30 million articles from thousands of authoritative journals for as little as $0.99 per article.
In is important to emphasize that DeepDyve is not selling copies of the articles., they rent them. The rental fee provides 24 hours of unlimited viewing of that article. A silver plan of $10 per month provides up to 20 articles per month for 7 days. The gold plan of $20 per month provides access to an unlimited number of articles for an unlimited amount of time.
The proprietary flash-based viewer does not allow for download, screen capture, or printing of an article. One can only read the articles on screen. The service does provide personalized suggestions, bookmarks, alerts and related articles.
Although DeepDyve has signed up 25 publishers, some prominent ones are missing. For example, Elsevier. The following are some of the publishers available:
DeepDyve presents another challenge for academic librarians. There is a good chance that many of the journals and articles available to researchers from DeepDyve have already been licensed by the library. How many researchers will use this service and pay yet again for the use of a work?
What would be really useful is if DeepDyve could incorporate openurl to redirect users back to a local copy rather then simply renting it from their own collection.
-Eric Schnell
October 29th, 2009
Hashtags are used by Twitter users to make it easier to search for tweets about specific topics and events. A hashtag consists of a word or code which is preceded by a “#” which helps denote what the tweet is about. Think of it as tweet-metadata. Hashtags allows specific tweets to be searchable and discoverable along with other tweets that contain the same hashtag.
For example:
#ala2009 : American Library Association 2009 Annual Meeting
#ohiostate : No explanation needed
Hashtags have become popular as a tool to track updates in real time especially during conferences or community events. Hashtags have also come into their own during crises and disasters, such as the #iranelection.
One issue with hashtags is that there is no hashtag registration or authority. Tags are ‘claimed’ by a group simply be using it. However, a single tag could also refer to several topic threads, a common occurrence is with conference hashtags. For example, #mla09 was used for annual meetings of the Maryland Library Association and the Medical Library Association which met within days of each other. A startup called Hashtag Directory is an attempt at a registration service.
A service that tracks tags currently in use is #Hashtags.
Some hashtags can be confusing at times because there’s little context for them. For example, how long would it take to figure out #tdf was the hashtag for the Tour de France? One source than can help identify hashtags is called What The Hashtag, a community-built encyclopedia that provides detailed definitions and context of hashtags and any trending topics. The site also provides stats, real-time stream monitoring, and charts.
Finally, hashtags can also be used by spammers and marketers to artificially boost the use of the tag so that is seen as a tending topic, which then drives more traffic. A recent example of this was an Apple Macbook giveaway based on posts which include the hashtag #moonfruit. (see, now you will go there and create even more interest)
While hashtags aren’t a perfect solution they are getting the job done. That is until a librarian gets involved and creates a hashtag authority file, registration system, and standard naming conventions.
-Eric Schnell
July 8th, 2009
There is an advanced option within Google Scholar that makes it easier to access OSU Libraries electronic and print resources. Since OSU Libraries that make their resources available via an OpenURL link resolver, Scholar automatically links to these resources as a part of search results.
Scholar identifies a user’s physical location using their computer’s Internet address. It then automatically populates the Library Links options for on-campus users, which can be viewed by selecting the Scholar Preferences option.
On-campus users will then see additional links in Google Scholar search results which facilitate access to their library’s resources.These links are directed to OSUL and OhioLINK servers which determines which journals OSUL subscribes to electronically and links to articles from those sources.
It is important to note that these options only appear automatically for on-campus users, they do not appear automatically for off-campus or mobile users. Since OSU Libraries have their holdings listed in WorldCat, Google Scholar also links for each result to WorldCat so users can find the book in a local library.
All off-campus Scholar users will see a ‘Library Search’ link for book results. Clicking on this link will direct users to the WorldCat system which will allow them to find a list of nearby libraries that have the desire.
One can also geolocate Scholar using these following steps:
- Click Scholar Preferences
- Type the name of your library in the ‘Library Links’ section
- Click Save Preferences
- Start searching with links to your library’s resources (you may need to authenticate yourself to access these resources
-Eric Schnell
June 25th, 2009
Wolfram Alpha is a ‘computational knowledge engine’ that answers questions, solves equations, and cross-references data types by synthesizing it into different combinations. The goal of WA is to make systematic knowledge immediately computable by drawing on terabytes of curated data.
The service is the brainchild of Stephen Wolfram, who is behind the Mathematica computational software and author of the book A New Kind Of Science. Mathematica includes data is curated by more than 100 Wolfram employees whom over the years have built a large knowledge base.
Now, you can have access to it as well.
People usually approach and compare WA to Google when they first use it. They type in standard queries, such as their own name, and quickly become frustrated when there are no results. However, WA is NOT a search engine. The service is not trying to out-Google Google.
It doesn’t index Web sites, scans keywords in a search query, and return a list documents that may contain an answer like Google does. It isn’t a community-sourced knowledge base, like Wikipedia. It doesn’t parse natural language and then retrieve documents from other data sources, like Powerset.
Instead, WA reads a question in natural language, scans its databases, and provides an answer using facts, figures, models, charts, and illustrations. It actually computes an answer to a question. WA presents all the results in its own interface rather then sending the searcher onto other Web sites.
The service is available for ad hoc, personal, non-commercial use only. For such use anyone is welcome to download results, print copies, and store downloaded content on your computer.
It’s current knowledge base makes WA is a neat niche service/tool/toy for scientists and technologists. At this early point there are going to be questions about how everyday Web users would benefit from using it over other resources. Still, it’s a very interesting concept which needs input and feedback from those playing with it.
Here are a few search examples:
There are all sorts of Easter Eggs as well, such in the response to 88mph and to the question “how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?”
- Eric Schnell
May 19th, 2009
Powerset is a discovery tool that (currently) extracts and organizes information contained in Wikipedia and Freebase. A natural language algorithm allows the searcher to use keywords, phrases, or even simple questions. The results page aggregates information from across multiple articles, in essence creating an enhanced Wikipedia article.For example, here is the search results for Thompson Library.Powerset (purchased by Microsoft in 2008) allows users to highlight passages which persist when the URL is bookmarked or shared the URL. Once the URL is copied and shared, the modified page will automatically scroll to the highlighted section. It’s great for sharing notes on Twitter or posting a specific sentence in context into a blog.For example, let’s say that you wanted to share that information that it has been reported that the size of the Thompson Library is expected to decrease 20% when it re-opens after the current renovation. As opposed to just sending that bit of information, one can send a link that directs others to the highlighted text. Now the the fact can be read in context of the Wikipedia article.The service also creates ‘Factz’ which are representations of information extracted from sentences. They are represented in three parts: the subject, relation and objects. Factz will appear for general topic queries on the search results page. On a topic page, Factz extracted from a given page in the article outline.The following video provides a nice introduction to the service.-Eric Schnell
May 7th, 2009
Do you have a particular hobby or interest that you have compiled a collection of Webs sites and blogs for? Do you keep extensive bookmark lists for these collections? Are you frustrated that you need to visit each of those sites? Do you finding yourself sifting through pages of results that come with a generic Google search? Are you looking for a way to search only those sites you compiled that focus on your interests?
You can do just that with the Google Custom Search Engine.
Custom Search allows one to harness Google’s indexing to create a search engine that is tuned only to search sites of interest.
For example, say you like to keep up with what is going on at the various Library Labs projects. This requires one to look at a list of experimental labs sites and then visit each one. With Custom Search, one can create a Library Labs Custom search in about five minutes. If one is interested in see what other labs are doing with the online catalog one can simply point to the URL of the search site or generate a search box that can then be embedded into web sites, blogs, whatever.
For developers, Google has released an API that lets other services connect to Custom Search. This allows one to create, update, and delete search engines without going through the Custom Search control panel. To learn more about the new API, read the programmer’s guide.
Keep track with the possibilities of Custom Search through their project team blog.
-Eric Schnell
April 27th, 2009
Most readers should have at least heard of Twitter by now. Twitter is one of many social networking micro-blogging tools which are available. Simply defined, micro-blogging is a form of blogging that allows individuals to publish brief text or multimedia updates.
If you are a Facebook user, you become a micro-blogger every time you update your status, comment on someone elses status, or add stuff to a wall.
Micro-blogging messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, digital audio or via the Web. The content of a micro-blog is different from a traditional blog in that it is typically more topical and shorter in length and size. With Twitter, it’s all the news that’s fit to print - in 140 characters or less. The micro-blog is the same as the traditional blog in that it can be utilize it for both individual or work-related activities.
Some people are quick to write-off micro-blogging (e.g. Twittering) as simply a time drain. They argue they don’t care that people are eating their corn flakes or they are taking their pet to the vet. If one is only getting such updates they are simply either following the wrong people or not taking full advantage of the tool.
For example, the other week a service called CoverItLive allowed me to tap into a conference Twitter feed so that I could keep up with the happenings at Computers in Libraries. A professor in media studies used Twitter to replace at least three classroom technologies. Many libraries, including the Library of Congress, are now using Twitter to communicate with their users. Joe Murphy did a nice presentation about how to use Twitter in libraries at the 2009 ACRL Conference
The problem right now is that the micro-blogging landscape is very similar to that which existed of the early days of email. Back then, proprietary dial-up entities like Prodigy and CompuServe were competitive and they didn’t do a good job connecting to one another. It was more likely than not that one could send only send messages to people inside the same service. Similarly, getting a micro-blog message published across multiple services is a challenge, although services like ping.fm help to syndicate messages across social networking sites.
There are too simply too many micro-blogging services than could possibly be listed in this post. Yammer is touted as an enterprise version of Twitter. Plurk integrates video and picture sharing. Pownce integrates file sharing and event invitations.
-Eric Schnell
April 6th, 2009
An academic librarian hands out a one page summary sheet at a library orientation program. Glancing down, an attendee notices a weird looking bar code placed at the bottom of the page. Taking out their mobile device, the attendee photographs the bar code and software converts the image into an Internet accessible address. The device suggests that the attendee go to the address in the device’s web browser. After agreeing, the browser is launched and the attendee is taken to the linked content. The bar code enabled the mobile device to connect the attendee from printed to online content.
Perhaps the most significant technology impacting the delivery of library services is the mobile Internet. There is a growing role for libraries to offer tools and that take advantage of mobile technologies to help users discover and connect to licensed content, library services and resources. One of the tools emerging that can help to connect users to the library using the mobile Internet is the high capacity bar code (HCB).
The typical bar code consists of varying width black vertical bars and white spaces, with different combination of the bars and spaces representing different characters. A scanner’s photocell detector converts the bars (absorbed light) into a high electrical signal and the spaces (reflected light) into low electrical signal. This completed signal is decoded into the characters that the bar code represents and passes them to the computer in a traditional data format.
Libraries use a variety of bar codes formats with each being capable of storing approximately 20 digits. These bar codes simply act as a reference number which a computer uses to look up an associated record. A bar code on a library book contains only an item number. When read by a scanner at checkout, the ILS finds the item record associated with the item number. The item record - not the bar code - contains the item’s descriptive information. The ILS associates the item record with the customer record, which is also accessed by scanning a bar code on an ID.
While conventional bar codes can store about 20 digits of information, a single HCB is capable of handling nearly 8,000. Characters can include numeric and alphabetic characters, symbols, and binary data. They can contain descriptive information, images, or URLs which can connect to different web sites based on time, day of week, or customer preferences. They are also scalable so they can be read them in various levels of magnification – only limited by the resolution of the available printing and imaging techniques. HCBs are quite durable since the can still be readable with up to 30% of the code to be obscured or removed by dirt, marks or damage.
One type of HCB is the QR code (quick response), an established ISO (ISO/IEC18004) standard.
A few possible uses for HCBs in libraries quickly come to mind - codes on books, journals, and even journal articles could link customers directly to bibliographic information, reviews, or additional networked support materials. Codes on devices could lead customers to help and tip sheets. Codes on promotional and marketing materials could lead customers to the library web site. Codes on handouts could direct customers directly to databases, a journal article or a current bibliography.
While HCBs are widely used in Asia, the U.S. has been slow in adopting the technology primarily due to the availability for code readers fopr camara phones on the market here. But this is already changing. There are sites are available to identify a readers, like i-nigma or zxing.
Resources:
Educause. The 7 Things You Should Know About QR Codes
How Stuff Works. How UPC Bar Codes Work
-Eric Schnell
March 23rd, 2009
